As internet usage continues to increase at home and work, users are increasingly comfortable managing their personal and professional lives online, dealing with on-line vendors from around the globe. However, the wedding industry is generally extremely localized. Each region has a local economy of vendor connections, and communities with distinct characteristics. Engaged couples and vendors typically spend a great deal of time and effort attempting to find each other. The overall experience for both the couples and the vendors is frustrating and time consuming due to the large number of vendors in each locale and the high fragmentation of the local market. As the wedding market continues to grow at a rapid pace, so do expenditures on weddings and related services.
Engaged couples are increasingly turning to on-line resources as the first place they search for wedding products, information, and registry services. Presently, such couples visit destination wedding websites to seek information, products and vendors. Such websites largely provide editorial content regarding weddings. Recognizing the trend of increased internet usage, traditional vendors of wedding services are transitioning their businesses on-line. However, present systems and methods provided by vendors do not create a platform that helps engaged couples by reducing the time, complexity, difficulty, and hassle of planning and executing a localized wedding. As with many of their off-line equivalents, the present on-line vendor offerings are single-service or single product focused.
On the vendor side, wedding vendors are struggling to market themselves on-line in the fragmented and local wedding industry, as increasingly more engaged couples are utilizing the Internet as a primary wedding planning resource. For example, vendors continue to struggle with the complexity of such systems and methods that provide “pay-per-click” advertising, site-targeted advertising for both text and banner advertisements, as well as the effectiveness of traditional print advertising. In order to reach newer generations of engaged couples, vendors of wedding related services need systems and methods to target potential clients, as well as market wedding related services to such clients.
It is desirable to provide aggregate local knowledge and experience, and providing an efficient matching engine between engaged couples and wedding related service vendors. It is desirable to have a comprehensive source for finding and vetting local vendors of wedding related services.
It is desirable to empower vendors of wedding related services by providing more choice and efficiency in acquiring leads for clients and converting such leads into actual business for a vendor. It is further desirable to provide vendors of wedding related services by providing increased choices and efficiency in acquiring leads and converting leads into business. It is further desirable to provide vendors of wedding related services new channels for acquiring business, and have greater control over how vendors allocate funds for marketing purposes.